The last known mainland 

The map of the Earth as we all know has been designed thanks to European discoveries.

 Not that these lands were not known before. 

Quite the contrary, all continents except Antarctica, were already inhabited since long before the time of the Great Navigations. 

And several people had their decimated with colonization.

 But without a doubt, our worldview will never be the same after all the continents were mapped. 

The last continent to be discovered was inhabited Oceania, the Europeans called Brand New World. 

The first expeditions to the region were the Portuguese, back in the 1500s, when they were circumnavigating the world.

 Some islands were discovered in this process. But it was a Dutchman, in 1642, he found (more specifically sighted) Australia and New Zealand for the first time.

 His name was Abel Tasman, and why Tasmania is named.

 Who mapped much of this region was the team's English captain James Cook, from 1768 He who discovered the western coast of Australia and the archipelago of islands which he called French Polynesia. 

Some may argue that Antarctica was the last continent known.

 But the first documented trips to the Antarctic waters were in the sixteenth century: including Amerigo Vespucci made ​​a visual record of the land - or rather ice.

James Cook and his team (yes, them again) were the first to cross the Arctic Circle. 

The first terrestrial Antarctic expeditions, however, occurred only in the mid-19th century Indeed, the last continent to be explored by land.